Letter 60 – Bagel Delivery

Dear Garrett, 

Not long after you died, Alex came to the house. She brought bagels. I don’t think she meant to stay. I think she just meant to shove them into Kevin’s hands and get the heck out of there, but for some reason she did stay. On the porch. And waited for me to come out.

It was the early days. I hadn’t showered. My hair wasn’t washed. I was wearing some old pjs and a sweater, with a floppy fleece jacket on because it was cold outside.

When I went out there, she gripped my hand and held on. We stared at each other, me emanating who knows what and her just looking right at it. Hi, I said. I haven’t taken a shower yet.

We sat on the couch on the front porch. I can’t remember what we said. I was amazed that she came, when I feel sure that that was the last thing she wanted to do.

She sent me cards. Funny notecards that she made from different cartoons she found online. The notes didn’t really say anything. Just short phrases like – Just saying hello. Hello!. Or one-line commentaries on the humor she’d chosen for the day. Look at this. Can you believe it? These notes served as a counterpoint to the sympathy cards coming in, every day.

A month or so later, I sent her a text and asked, do you want to come on a walk with Koda and me? I wanted to be around someone, to get out of the house and to talk to someone. Yes!, she said. And that was the start of our Sanity Sundays.

We talked about anything. Some of it was about you. Different thoughts about you and what happened. About my counselor and some of the things she said. About experiences I had, like going to see the medium. And we talked a little about her stuff. A person very close to her had died many years ago, a couple of people, actually, that really affected her, and we talked a little about that. I had context, now, and could better understand what she said. We talked about work, and life, and people we knew. It was good, to have a person you could talk to about whatever you wanted, or just listen to her talk.

We walked that Spring, into the Summer, and into the Fall. When it started getting cold, we went less often, and then after Christmas, we stopped.

The need for that level of the intensity had faded. But I’m hoping in the spring we might take it up again, on occasion, a little bit differently. Thank you, Alex, my friend. And, I hope your therapy is as good as mine.